Look im just telling you what they told me. I am not in the field of aerospace engineering but I do want to push back and state that if it was just about money and bullying suppliers, boeing would already be on Mars. You are providing an anecdote about your friend. Great, same as my anecdote when I questioned Starlink employees. It would be wonderful if there was some legit competitor to Starlink in the US so that everyone can just ignore Musk but right now many people can't.

Regarding the tesla link its crazy to see that post crop up again. I remember reading it the day it was posted. I was one of the first people on /r/realtesla. I genuinely believed that they were toast in 2018. That sub has been proven wrong time and time again and now they have devolved into whatever absurdity as long as it is negative of Musk companies. That post has not aged well at all. Looking back, I suspect a lot of corners were cut when the company was running on fumes. The model 3 rollout was so bad that not even the shorts could have anticipated the nonsense they pulled(for example: the famous tent) but they managed to survive and improve significantly since the early model 3 days.

Like I said in my initial post whether there is still enough talent remaining post-Trump remains to be seen.